


Storm Uncles

by slayertown



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everybody Lives, F/M, Gendrya - Freeform, M/M, Mutual Pining, Shenanigans, Wholesome, aka gendry's guncles, baratheon bonding time, gendrya-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-07 15:35:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20978249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slayertown/pseuds/slayertown
Summary: Ned squeezes that sweet Baratheon chin in Mott's forge and sends the fateful child to Storm's End for protection under his uncle Renly. Loras graces them with his presence, and together they shape the boy into something worthy of a Stark.🦌🔨🌹





	1. Bottom Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once you're out of Flea Bottom, you can only go up.
> 
> A prologue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gendry and Arya are teens in this. I picture him 16 and her 14 at the start, basically just tightening the canon gap; whatever you think is appropriate for teen mutual pining works.

It saves time not owning shit. Makes it easy to pack and easy to run.

He had heard the Night’s Watch were recruiting in the city. Heard they took some petty thieves over on the Street of Flour. Then when the King’s Hand—the second one, yes, on top of the first one who died—came in to the shop and happened to be from the North, squeezing his chin all nosy-like and saying he had the look of a warrior, Gendry could all but see the white at his feet.

The next day Master Mott took the bull’s helm from his station. Gendry found it on his cot and knew that he was done for. _He’s got the build for it_, Lord Stark had said.

As swiftly as Tobho Mott had taken him under his wing so many years ago had he let him fall back to the ground.

With no one to say goodbye to—the other apprentices, like _Donny_, that little shitwind, thought him bullheaded, so he never made friends. But who needs a friend that drops hard work in the cooling bucket? Useless, fucking, brown-mouthed Donny, always denting shit with his sweat pools for hands. Anyway,—Gendry finds himself alone at the docks of King’s Landing.

It’s sunset. And it would be pretty if he could care about the way the pinks and the blues of the sky swirled together to make a stoney violet.

As the water laps at the pillars of the dock, Gendry tries to let the sound distract him from his thoughts.

_I’m going to a place made just for bastards._

The tide starts to sound like it’s scratching against the wood.

_Maybe it serves me right to be there._

The scratches are more like gasps now, out of rhythm, and… girlish.

Someone’s crying.

Behind him sits a small figure with messy hair, tucked into the shadow of a stack of crates. Knees are curled up to a chin, and a smock the color of a river’s got muddied splotches around the ends. And because he’s not a dick, he decides to check on it.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” the girlish voice says between sniffles. “Leave me alone.”

So it bites.

“You know you shouldn’t be out here by yourself. Lots of bad men come crawling about. Thieves, murderers, rapers.”

“Which one are you?”

Teeth.

“Smith’s apprentice,” he grimaces as soon as he says. “At least I was until my master got sick of me. I leave tomorrow.”

The figure isn’t much taller when it stands up out of the shadow. As she approaches him step by step, Gendry can see red lines like branches stretching out of puffy, gray eyes.

“You make swords?”

“Almost did. Master Mott gave me a bit of steel to start my first one, but,” he shrugs and rests his weight on his wrists as he leans his hands behind him. “Now I’ll never learn it.”

She sits with him, feet dangling off the side of the pier.

“What about you?" Gendry asks. "Someone picking on you?”

She sicks her glare on the water, hands balling into little fists in her lap. “The prince killed my friend.”

Gendry leans forward again, gripping the ledge of the wood. “Bloody highborns,” he sighs, shaking his head with exasperation. “King Robert and his ass full of drink almost ran me down before, when I was playing outside the Mud Gate. Couldn’t give a damn about anyone else.” He looks at her pained expression. “I’m sorry about your friend.”

“Me too,” she says to the bay. “It was all my fault.”

“Now don’t say that.”

“But it’s true,” she snaps her head at him. “He just wanted to play, and he died because of me.”

Gendry’s eyebrows furrow at the sight of moisture in her eyes. “Look, I know what it’s like to lose someone you care about. You blame yourself because you just want them back. But it’s not true. And it don’t help anyone thinking like that.” His hand drifts to her shoulder and his fingertips touch the fabric _just so_. She notices and he drops it. “You said the prince killed your friend. Wasn’t you. It’s that cheese-faced prick’s fault.”

She chuckles, even with the tear sliding down the rose of her cheek. “I think cheese is prettier.”

“Yeah, you dress it up in silk, it still stinks, doesn’t it?”

They both laugh. It’s nicer than seeing her cry.

“Who did you lose?” the girl asks.

_None of your business _is his usual answer when people bring this up, but, again, not a dick, he stops himself.

“My mum.”

“Was she killed?”

“Sort of. Got sick.”

If he had to guess, the way her chin slouches makes it look like she regrets asking.

The hue of the horizon deepens into a plum, its pit of a sun shrinking quicker now. He lets out a sigh. “I think it put her at rest.” For some reason her gaze retreats to her lap when his eyes go back to her. “Look, it’s getting dark soon. I’ll walk with you.”

She gets up in a hurry and sticks her arms at him. “No!”

“No?”

“I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Why would I get hurt? I’m trying to stop _you_ from getting hurt.”

“I’ll be fine. I got here by myself, I can make it back, too. Besides, it’s not far.”

“You think I’m stupid?” He starts to get up. “I’m not letting you go around alone.”

“I think you’re stupider.”

Despite the bite in her voice, the way her eyes widen at him makes her look a bit scared. Maybe she didn’t realize how tall he really was. And he’s just a stranger. He’s given no reason for her to trust him. She probably has the right of it.

Before he can change his mind, he gives a slow nod.

“I’m Gendry.”

“I’m Ar-,” she hesitates. “I’m Arry.”

And then she runs away, her braid bouncing at her neck until she disappears behind the merchant stalls in the distance. She’s fast.

Gendry glances at the spot where he sat and the space next to it.

He wonders if he should’ve done it the other way around. Gone to their old tenement in String Alley first and left the sunset for last. No, this is a good order of things. Maybe he can treat himself to a nicer meal in the morning—a softer bread, something with a bit of cheese—before he goes.

In his head, he says goodbye to the murky, gray-green waters, and the sliver of sun he won’t see much of up north.

And then he walks back to the smithy alone for his last night in a place he thought was supposed to be home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uncle Renly coming soon!
> 
> This is based on a random headcanon I made a while ago on tumblr ([@harrenhollaback](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/harrenhollaback/)) and I couldn't not write it any longer. It's just gonna be a fun ride with Renly and Loras steering the ship.
> 
> Each chapter will feature a different Queer Eye category because I needed structure and that's what gave it to me. (Pour one out for me not naming this 'Queer Eye of the Storm.') Feedback, reacts, diss tracks, and other guncle headcanons are welcome. I hope you enjoy this!
> 
> Fic summary inspired by the cougar dad eddard stark energy from [this fanart](https://icesalamander.tumblr.com/post/165237474246).
> 
> ♥︎


	2. Half Lowborn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Renly 'King of Quips' Baratheon meets Gendry 'Knuck If You Buck' Waters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo canon Renly was pro-Operation Get Daenerys Merc'd, but since it's Everybody Lives AU, character dickbaggery has been dialed down proportionately. Took some liberty with bastard treatment as well, because purely from a literary perspective, it'd be really cute to call Gendry 'lordling' at some point.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

“Welcome to Storm’s End, my lord.”

Gendry looks around to see who else got out of the litter with him. He shared a wagon with six other Flea Bottomers, each he thanked the gods kept to themselves the whole way.

“Who are you talking to?”

“You, my lord.”

“I’m not a lord,” he chuffs. “Should I be calling you that?”

“N-no, my-“

“Great,” Gendry shoves past the random man and walks up towards the holdfast after the others. He didn’t realize recruits stayed at castles along the way, but it makes sense. Allegiance to no one means lodging with anyone.

From a distance, the golden stag embellishment already gleams bright on the chest of the man standing by the gate. A shimmery, emerald cloak dons the broad of his back. On cue, the courtesies start crawling up Gendry’s throat. His gaze lands on the shoulder-length black hair, safe from the blue-green eyes that are too highborn to meet.

And then the man opens his mouth.

“Welcome to Storm’s End, nephew!”

_First “my lord,” then “nephew.” It must be Call Me Stupid Shit Day this part of town._

Before he can answer, the rich man traps his hold around him. Gendry hasn’t bothered with this bunk in years, so his arms just kind of hover to the side of the rich man like a pair of open tongs.

The man pulls him away, keeping his hands on Gendry’s arms and suddenly he’s not the tongs anymore, he’s the ingot.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. I know I’ve been an absentee uncle, but I promise I’ve gifts to shower you with yet,” he says with too much gusto at too close a distance. “Do you like feathers?”

_Uncle? “_M’lord, forgive me, but I think you’re mistaken.”

“Nonsense, call me Renly. We’re family!”

_Family?_ Gendry shakes his head at the words, the hold on his body, the _everything_ going on. “Pardon, m’lord Renly, I think our party’s got lost. I’m bound for the Watch.”

The lord finally ceases his grip on him. “The _Watch_? With a face like _that_?”—only to take Gendry’s cheeks together in one hand—“It’s like a mirror into my youth. No, you should be bound to my dresser for me to look into in the mornings. It’d be a kinder sight,” he smiles as he says. For the first time, Gendry realizes that smiles can be loud.

To much relief, Renly releases his face. Gendry notices the two guards at the gate have spears in their hands and longswords at their waists.

“I don’t understand. I’m just a bastard.”

“Yes, my brother’s bastard son, though son all the same here.” An arm slings around Gendry’s back again, _great_, this time to lead him into the hall.

“Your brother?”

“Ugh, the Iron Oaf, though you better know him as King Robert, long may he wane and so on and so forth.”

Gendry’s ears are like the guards outside, working in the precise amount it takes to just be there.

Also the random man is back for some reason, and he’s gently tugging at the sack on Gendry’s shoulder.

“They said you were his spitting image, though I’m sure after you’ve bathed—Castra, a bath for the young lord, please, thank you—that’d be too generous a comparison on your part.”

The random man, Castra, takes his bag and makes haste upstairs to heed a command… for Gendry.

“The _king_ is… my father?”

“And the king is my brother,” Renly says with a grand wave of his hands that Gendry wishes he didn’t do because it’s gestured to the great hall of the castle and Gendry can’t process royal furnishings on top of the royal words coming out of the royal man’s face who says he’s his royal _uncle_.

Even if he could take the guards, his belongings have walked upstairs, and the wagon’s probably gone by now. Maybe if he tripped one of them from behind and smashed the—

“Should I get the maester for you?”

“What?”

“You look painfully ill when you think hard like that. Worry not, nephew,” he claps his hands as if that’d make the words take effect. “You’ll be glad we whisked you away from court. Robert’s lioness wouldn’t have tolerated you for a second in her grace’s golden pit. Here, the only wife of mine you’ll have to mind is _her_,” Renly rubs his hand on the stone walls of the castle—_castle_, that Gendry is in.

The voice that belongs to Castra the Random reenters the room. “Lord Gendry, your chambers are ready. A warm bath has been prepared for you as well.”

Maester. Court. Chambers. _For you_. All words he’s never heard before yet somehow understands enough to make his legs go where Castra is pointing.

For all the trouble his face alone has taken, he can at least pawn a fancy bath off the status-drunk highborns.

And even though his mind is blank, his body still knows the motions required of him. He bows his head before he leaves the room.

* * *

There was never a picture to go with what he dreamed of as a boy— when he let himself think he could give his mother a better life. But this would not be it.

His bag looks like a pebble spat out in a cave. It sits on a four-poster bed, canopied as if it’s going to rain inside, and set against a massive window framing the Narrow Sea. Jewel-encrusted turtle shells and antlers fashioned into candle holders cling to the walls around him in some sycophantic vision of decor.

He can measure the stone of the floor by cot. Seven. He could fit seven cots in here easy without moving anything at all.

Everything is so pretty that it feels hideous.

He unravels the clothes he wrapped around his bull’s helm to keep it cushioned and hidden in his bag. He puts on a pair of clean pants, though wrinkled. Exhausted, his body sinks into the featherbed. The freshly washed skin of his arm glides back and forth along the slippery, satin sheets.

It should feel better, he thinks. To be told your problems are solved. But yesterday his father was a ghost and today he is the king; yet two Hands he sent instead of the man.

“Recognize me now, young one?” The voice that called itself uncle interrupts.

Six feet of head-to-toe, deep green armor clinks and clanks itself into the chamber. The summer sun reflects off the helm of golden antlers and Gendry has to squint away.

“If you’re looking for your fawn, I think it’s too late,” Gendry points his chin at the many protrusions on the walls.

A finger flicks up the visor. “Oh, I’m not the one looking for my make.” Renly removes the helm and places it in Gendry’s hands.

It’s the best handiwork in the Seven Kingdoms. Mott’s mark.

But that’s nothing special. The upper ranks of any tourney in King’s Landing is an eye feast of Mott’s craftsmanship.

Then the divots of the breastplate come back to him. The way the enameled, gold lining runs against the true, metallic green. Gendry was never nervous in the forge, never when shaping finery, or pouring molten molds. But he was when he was learning to mix tints, anxious for the colors to cure with the right vibrancy every time.

“I made that,” he points at the memory on Renly’s chest.

“I was curious to know the chances.” His mouth inches into a smirk.

He berates himself for not discerning what the fancy lord was trying to do sooner. It’s as if the spectacle downstairs wasn’t enough. Renly’s walked in here, fully clad in his glimmering wealth, ready to throw Gendry’s service in his face. Mayhaps he wants his horse shoed or his plated ass wiped next. Whatever it is, the lord means to remind him of his station: beneath him.

“That’s all we are to you, isn’t it? We’re just curiosities or playthings you pick up and toss about.”

“Nephew—“

“I’m not your nephew.” Gendry knows this tone isn’t bid within ten paces of a highborn, knows it well from being reminded so often, but when his head burns like a furnace the only way out for the steam is his mouth.

“Your brother was not my father. Never saw him, never knew him. Don’t know why it should be different with you. Hells, if my father was the big, bloated head of the entire Seven Kingdoms, he could’ve done _something_. Anything. Could’ve given my mum the care she needed. Like one of your fancy maesters you’re so ready to throw about.” Renly opens his mouth to speak, but Gendry doesn’t let him. “Like what’s that in the fucking shells? Every time one of you lot would ask for pretty gems in your plate like it’d make you stronger or fight better—I wasn’t even allowed to touch the jewels in the smithy, only the journeymen. And you mean to say this is mine now?”

A single shell in the room with its emeralds and topazes would have been more than enough for the Silent Sisters. Instead he cleaned his mother’s skin with damp rags, feeling like a fool as he covered her with dirt anyway. The best he could do to mark the patch of grass outside the old tenement was to smooth a branch and lodge it into a cone of earth.

“What else can your word do? If my lord would only permit it?”

“Gendry.” Renly speaks with a level tone, the playfulness washed out of it. “I am not Robert.”

“Then where is he? I owe him the gratitude I carry so heavy in my hands.”

“A fair request, though one I cannot grant.”

“Why? He’s the King. He can do whatever he wants.”

“Would that he could. But you cannot return to the capital. Simply put, because your life is in danger there. The queen will not tolerate an affront to her heirs, and Robert, fortunately so, if you would listen to me, cannot abandon the throne for a quaint ride to his childhood home that takes care of itself.”

“You highborns will let anything get in the way of your so-called family, won’t you?”  
  
“Mayhaps Robert would,” Renly raises his voice to say. “But note who you are speaking to.”

Gendry looks at him, really looks at him. There’s a familiar sense of pointed restraint in Renly’s eyes, in the grit of his teeth, that Gendry returns. “What do you want from me?”

At once, he softens, an ease of air restoring to him.

“To give velvet a chance.”

“Did you listen to anything that I said?”

“Yes, but I didn’t think we’d speak this long, and it’s getting hot underneath the armor.”

Renly plants himself on the bed and begins unlacing the shoulder segments.

“That’s not my fault.”

“I know,” Renly rolls his eyes at himself. “I thought it would make you happy to see something from the shop you spent so many years with. I thought it’d give us something to talk about, how fine and fair a man Tobho was, how so much more pleasant a subject of conversation he is than the other singular man that connects us,” the lord gruffly explains.

“Robert was a fine warrior in his day. He saved the realm from Mad King Aerys and brought justice to his cruelties,” Renly more recites than states. “Now he’s a king. But he’s also a drunk and a whoremonger.”

“My mother was not a whore,” Gendry snaps.  
  
“Besides her, then. Listen, you don’t need me to tell you that you should do everything you can not to take after him.”

Renly fusses with the buckles on the sides of his chest plate. Gendry pities him and reaches over to help, swiftly undoing buckles and laces with deft hands.

“But if you stay in my care, I’ll see to it that you become someone in your own right. Here, you’ll learn how to fight, how to defend the castle. You’ll learn how to read, how to run a household. You’ll hear from our sworn lords, our smallfolk, of which you may know a thing or two about. And, if you wish it, you can continue your lessons in the forge with Nikkol.”

Gendry stops to lean back and absorb the litany of changes proffered to him.

“He’s no Tobho Mott, but he’s fortified the most formidable castle in Westeros for decades now,” Renly continues. “Do you accept?”

Gendry watches him lift the gilded plate over his head. The laces of his canvas jacket are in disarray and hairs are out of place. Even with the mail around his abdomen and steel casing his legs, it’s the plainest Renly’s looked since Gendry arrived.

“How long did you know about me?”

“How long have you known Eddard Stark?”

Gendry sits with the information. Weighs it.

“I don’t know how to be a lord.”

“Good. Because that’s my job.”

* * *

Renly’s voice projects as if he has an audience of more than the one. “Here is your first lesson,” he announces as he stands. Legs still clink and clatter as he gave up on having to undo the rest of the armor himself. “You want to be listened to? That’s good. But half of being listened to…” he pauses to raise an expectant eyebrow at Gendry. Gendry blinks.

“—is being looked at.” Slowly, his head turns to the door.

Gendry watches him, trying to figure where this display is going.

“I said _half of being listened to is being looked at.”_

Two servants walk in carrying a hefty, elm chest. It thuds on the ground and opens to reveal a marketplace of colors and textures— stacks of fine trousers, velvet cloaks, leather doublets, and their exquisite ilk.

“You sure you’re really a lord and not a tradesman? You seem fit for doll making,” Gendry scoffs.

“Ah, the temper of Stannis and the tongue of a snake.”

“What’s a stannis?”

“A bore, if you ever knew one.”

“I’m not a boar…”

“We’ll take your measurements properly in the coming days,” Renly claps his hands onto Gendry’s shoulders to lead him to the chest. “For now, these are garments that fit me when I was around your size.” Renly reaches into the pool of clothes. “I want you to try _this_.”

The _this_ is a shimmery bronze doublet with a brocade of gold reflects. Beaded antlers line the shoulders because they can’t seem to claim anything without the image. There are enough antlers in this place to build a large, leafless forest.

“With _this_,” Renly adds as he lifts up a pair of knee-length velvet trousers in an equally shiny finish.

It takes some wangling, but Gendry deigns to humor him. A strange sinking rolls in his belly as Renly herds him to the first body-length mirror he’s ever seen.

“How does it feel?”

“I think it’s missing the hat with the bells on the ends.”

“Oh, I knew I forgot something.” Renly returns from the vestibule of fancy with a puffy matching hat for Gendry’s head. A single white feather sticks out of it by his ear.

“Now it needs a lute,” Gendry snorts, resigned to the sideshow that is his ensemble. “You win any battles lately I can sing about?”

“You want me to start one?” Renly returns. “You know,” he looks Gendry’s reflection up and down, eyebrows knitting together as he assesses the sight. “The feather really takes effect when you walk. Try that.”

Gendry shrugs and proceeds to the door and back, the feather bouncing lightly atop him. He walks for Renly much in the same manner that he receives hugs. Poorly. Unwillingly. And a little like he just threw out his back.

“Ah,” Renly knuckles the bottom of his chin. “I see why you took the bull for your helm. You have all the lightness of one.”

Gendry shrugs again as if to say _too bad_, and goes to change back into his plainclothes.

“Let me see this on you,” Renly suggests, holding the helm out to Gendry.

“I-it’s not,” he sputters. “It’s not really for wearing.”

“Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Because I’m not a knight.”

Renly narrows his eyes. “Would you like to be?”

Gendry swallows the lump in his throat before he dips his chin an inch.

Renly smiles. “Put it on.”

Barring further protest, the steel head arrives in his hands. The request is somehow more unnerving than any possible feathered creature waiting in the chest.

“You don’t let yourself imagine things, do you?” The question pulls Gendry out of his fixed stare. “When I was a child, I used to run about these halls and imagine I was anything from a wizard to a rain god,” Renly muses wistfully. “Perhaps you are too old for make believe. But knighthood isn’t such a thing. Not here,” he gestures to the space around him.

Charm is a language Gendry doesn’t speak. Still, he can decipher no malice in Renly’s words. Something about the way he lives here, with no lady, no children, a scorned brother, seems lonesome after all. Anger for his phantom father, he hesitates to admit, may be misplaced in this alleged, newfound uncle. Renly, most evidently, is making an effort.

Gendry slides the metal around his head like a crown. He looks through the steel eyes at his reflection, and he sees a boy.

“It suits you,” his uncle notes. “Only you have more horns than that now.”

Removing the helm, he runs his hand through his hair to placate it. It’s a buried memory how messy it makes him look. When he first completed it, it took near another fortnight to find a privy moment in the daylight from the other apprentices. And that was the last time.

“You’ll learn these matters do import,” the lord remarks in a lowered voice. “Clothing casts your confidence. It is your thread-spun armor. And you seem you want to take charge someday,” Renly asserts. “Look in the bottom of the chest.”

The horned helmet sits again on the sheets and through layers and layers of bright fabrics, a stash of muted tones reveals itself at the bottom. Gendry sees black leather and pulls it out to unfold a fine, unadorned jerkin with gray thread lining.

“Did you really bury everything I’d actually wear at the end of this?”

“Something about your manners told me you dislike having things so easily handed to you. Was I wrong?”

Gendry shakes his head and tries on the shirt in the mirror. Like everything else, it fits, only this piece lays a bit more snug. “I like it,” he decides.

Though it feels right and wrong at the same time. Right that he should know relief, wrong that it came by as strange a chance as his blood.

It starts to dawn on him that tonight he will sleep on soft sheets. That if he wakes and needs to piss, he will not venture outside or share a chamberpot to toss come morning. Having a “before” for himself came sooner than he expected, leaving “ready” a question amongst many unanswered.

Renly detaches the stag brooch that fastened one side of his discarded cloak. “Metal is metal,” he says as he takes his time placing it on Gendry’s chest. “Even as it changes shape.”

Renly turns to step behind Gendry and looks into the reflection with him. He positions both his hands on Gendry’s shoulders, giving him a gentle squeeze.

They look absurd. Renly half ready for a duel in his armored legs and Gendry ready for a nap the waist down in his wrinkled pants.

But he sees it now. It’s unmistakeable.

There is a likeness between them.

* * *

A moment later, Castra enters what is now Gendry's bedchamber.

“Lord Renly, a raven," the man says.

“Not now, Castra,” Renly retorts from the mirror. “Can’t you see I’m busy endearing myself like a swan to its hatchling.”

“But, my lord, you told me to come to you at once for matters of war and imminent social gathering.”

Renly pauses, his face growing serious.

“Either Stannis means to repay me for sending him that book of bodily illustrations or…” He inhales through his mouth like he’s pulling a rope of air.

“_Visitors?_”

Castra hands him the scroll. Forest green and sparkling gold swirl in marbled wax together. Pressed into it: the imprint of a rose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gendry's golden outfit is [this](https://www.medievalcollectibles.com/product/damask-renaissance-doublet/).
> 
> If you're still reading this, thank you so much!!! I truly mean it! I still feel very new to fic writing and seeing a number more than zero next to "subscribers" for this story really made my heart the swollest muscle in my body. It means a lot.
> 
> 💛🖤


End file.
